It is common to provide a retainer for the chips used to play poker and to play other games of chance. Poker chips are disc shaped, with the most common sizes being approximately 40 millimeters, or one and nine-sixteenth inches in diameter and three millimeters, or one-eighth inch in thickness. Although the chips used in a single game are all equal in size, they may be different in color, with the differences in color and markings used to distinguish the value of the chips. Typically, the players determine the value of the chips before the commencement of play. The use of such chips being all of the same size and shape facilitates the play of a gambling game such as poker.
Chips are normally transported to and from a game site in a rectangular carrying case. At the game site, the chips are sold to players by a banker who is responsible for carrying out the money transactions. To aid in the distribution of chips, the banker may transfer the chips to a chip dispenser of the type know in the art.
The typical chip retainer has a generally cylindrical body with a plurality of longitudinal bores therein with the axes of the bores parallel to the axis of the body and with each bore having an elongate slot extending to the outer surface of the cylinder. The bore is open to one end of the cylinder and is closed at the other end with the open end directed upwardly and stacks of gambling chips, hereinafter referred to as “poker chips,” inserted into each of the elongate bores. One can view the stack of the chips through the slot, and can count the desired number of chips to be removed at any one time and extend a finger through the slot to remove the chips desired. At the onset of and during a game of poker or other game of chance, the participants in the game purchase the number of chips they desire with the funds going to “the house.” For serious poker players who enjoy an evening of fun playing games of skill and chance, one of the players serves as the house and assumes the task of buying and selling chips as needed by the players as the games proceed. The container that retains the chips from one night's festivities to the next also serves as the banker's vault for retaining chips prior to sale or returning purchased chips back to the house. The duties of the banker in buying and selling chips and maintaining control of the funds consumes a significant portion of the time of playing the game of poker. It is desirable, therefore, to have an efficient way of managing the chips of a poker game so that the time required of the banker as he sells or buys back chips is minimized.
It is also desirable to have a device that can easily dispense a predetermined number of chips to a player with the chips dispensed into an orderly stack, with like chips adjacent to each other so that they can be easily counted by the player who had made the purchase. It would also desirable to provide a device which would dispense such chips to a player in a stack that could be delivered to the player without requiring the banker to handle the individual chips.